Over the years, various aircraft maintenance equipment has been developed for maintaining various portions of an aircraft. This aircraft maintenance equipment has included washing, cleaning, deicing, painting, polishing, sanding, grinding, and/or other maintenance functions. Such systems conventionally provide an aircraft cleaning or painting apparatus which has a pair of spaced-apart tracks for positioning an aircraft therebetween and a track base slidably mounted to each track. An example of such a system can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,299 by Collins et al. titled "Aircraft Deicing Apparatus". Other systems provide an aircraft cleaning or painting apparatus that has a boom pivotally mounted to a slidable support base. Examples of such an apparatus can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,646 by Shaw et al. titled "Aircraft Maintenance Robot", U.S. Pat. No. 5,318,254 by Shaw et al. titled "Aircraft Maintenance Robot", and U.S. Pat. No. 3,835,498 by Arato titled "Craft Washing Plant". Still other systems provide overhead tracks under which an aircraft or other vehicle passes for providing maintenance such as painting, cleaning, or deicing. Examples of this type of system can be seen in French EPO-0341-134 Published Patent Application by Jonca and U.S. Pat. No. 5,320,121 by Alexanian titled "Vehicle Washing System".
These conventional aircraft maintenance systems, however, attempt to provide movement of a washing, cleaning, deicing, painting, polishing, sanding, or grinding apparatus by complex boom type systems which often require an expensive installation facility which includes extensive installation obstacles to overcome. These systems also often distribute the weight of the apparatus performing the maintenance functions either with the structure, i.e., building, hangar, garage, itself or at a substantial distance from the aircraft. This operational requirement, in turn, requires the extensive boom-type or robotic-type arms which extend outwardly from a base to perform the maintenance operation. These boom-type arms conventionally carry extensive electronics and can be quite expensive to manufacture. Other problems associated with these boom-type arms include the risk from damage to the long outwardly extending arms by moving aircraft, the requirement of complex and expensive control of the arm at a base a distance away from the aircraft, and the lack of effective control of the arm, e.g., to track the contour of the aircraft, and the maintenance tools adjacent the aircraft.